Shusher

A gentle reminder when voices get loud.

Shusher is an Android app for autistic kids who shout while using their tablet. It listens in the background and, when it hears a scream, the screen dims softly and a friendly character appears going “shh”. Two seconds later everything is back to normal. No scolding, no scares.

Website: https://gmoqa.github.io/shusher/ (English, Español, Português, Français)

Features

• Works on top of any app (videos, games) and from a Quick Settings button.
• Live sensitivity meter: if the green bar reaches the orange zone, the reminder appears.
• Daily log of reminders for the last 7 days.
• Bring your child’s favorite characters as PNG images.
• The microphone rests while the screen is off.
• No internet permission: audio is only used to measure volume and is discarded right away.
• Android 8.0+ · English, Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Build

Requires JDK 17+ and the Android SDK.

./gradlew installDebug   # build and install on a connected device
./gradlew test           # unit tests

The landing page is generated into docs/ (served by GitHub Pages) from site/:

python3 tools/build_site.py        # one static page per language + sitemap
python3 tools/build_site.py --og   # also the social preview images (needs Chrome and ImageMagick)

Google Play

Store texts and graphics are in fastlane/metadata/android/, and fastlane/README.md has the Play Console checklist and the answers for each form.

License

The code and the original illustrations, icon and sound are released under the MIT License.

Third-party files

Files	Project	License
app/src/main/assets/fonts/Nunito.ttf, docs/fonts/nunito-latin.woff2 (latin subset)	Nunito, © 2014 The Nunito Project Authors	SIL Open Font License 1.1 (OFL.txt next to each copy)
site/icons/*.svg, inlined in docs/**/index.html	Material Symbols, © Google	Apache License 2.0 (site/icons/LICENSE)
docs/img/flags/*.webp (rasterized)	flag-icons, © 2013 Panayiotis Lipiridis	MIT (docs/img/flags/LICENSE)
app/src/main/res/drawable/ic_shush.xml (the “shh” letters, converted to outlines)	Inter, © The Inter Project Authors	SIL Open Font License 1.1
gradle/wrapper/*, gradlew, gradlew.bat	Gradle	Apache License 2.0

Not covered by the MIT license

docs/img/characters/* show Peppa Pig and Daddy Pig (© Entertainment One / Hasbro) and Pablo, Tyrone and Uniqua from The Backyardigans (© Nickelodeon / Nelvana). They appear on the website only as examples of characters a family can add. They are not part of the app, Shusher is not affiliated with their owners, and no license to them is granted.